So it's been an interesting week and I've made some opening moves. I really have no idea what I'm doing so it's all quite fun and exciting. So I decided to invest £10,000 on the back of COP26 and the whole greening of the economy malarkey. I received some good advice from a couple of brokers and freelance traders. The advice was basically don't invest in anything green because it will either make a loss or will just be greenwash nonsense. So on the back of that advice I did what the universe does and invested in both evil and ethics and hope that the synergy between the two would result in balance and steady controlled growth of the holistic state (my bank account in this case and not the future of humanity ).
So I split the investment with 50% on Jupiter Green Fund (a fund that invests only in business with net zero objectives as part of their core business strategy) and the other 50% on traditional investments between KKR Inc and Co (the people who own Viridor), the MSCI World Index, a FTSE tracker, a little bit of Ether crypto and M&G (some of these were recommended by brokers on the back of the Omicron scare and spooky market- if you want to know what the engines behind the over politicisation of coronavirus is, just listen in to investor talk!) ). Any money I make off the unethical investments I will put into ethical investments- land for nature and also to cover the losses in the green investments etc. I've also put an offer in for a buy to let in Hackbridge (the hub of the Wandle Valley Regional Park) and waiting for a formal answer from the seller.
Also devised a new internet marketing strategy for Little Oak Tree and Garden Care and hope to push the envelope with that too next year. This is by far and away (orders of magnitude) the best possible investment I can do, as if you own a business there is nothing better you can do than invest in your own business (and pay off mortgages on properties) and also more control of the ethics and values behind it. However stocks and shares and buy to let is passive investment and doesn't eat even more into birding or family time.
I'll see how I get on with this first £10K. So far I'm down £126 but that is to be expected as fees involved in buying and the Green Fund has already lost 5% in value since the hysteria of COP26 has died down (but any Green Fund is a long investment). The whole market is awash with ethical investments and there is lots of mis-selling going on See Here with everyone trying to jump on the ESG (ethical, social governance ) and SRI (socially responsible investing) band wagons. Jupiter Green seems to be one of the more genuine ones (which indeed probably means won't make a lot of money and also they only hand out 0.2% dividends where as companies like M&G hand out 7% dividends).
So we need £2 million for our nature reserve and so far in the first week we have lost £126 so this could be a long time saving up.
4 comments:
I'm surprised at the advice you got. Zero Carbon has buy in from governments across the world with commitments, so it seems reasonable to think that green infrastructure and industries will be built. That's certainly the view of all investment advisors I've talked to.
Just to state the obvious, average investments should make an average return. To make an above average return from green you either have to be better at picking winners in the green sector than the market is, or you have to invest across the whole of the green sector and trust that the returns from green investments will be better than the current market expectation, and the market currently thinks there will be profits from the green sector.
Hi,
any good tips of green stock to buy into? It's a minefield and basically going on any good advice I can get. Agree my contacts are very wary of the whole green investment trend as so much scope for greenwash and attracting vulnerable ethical investors. I sort of agree with them too (everything I'm reading about it all is setting off my scamdar- the kind of sense I get when feeding about crypto and watching TV commercials)but would certainly want to invest in green transitional businesses that can create solutions and make a profit.
Hopefully this is all a step in the right direction but for the economy to be truly sustainable companies would need to report on natural, social and economic capital (so we would need advanced metrices on how to measure natural and social capital) and for those values to be reported in annual reports and presented in indices. i.e. the FTSE or similar would need to incorporate natural capital metrices. At the moment we are a long way from that sort of economy but if the ecological and climate crisis starts crashing the global economy and threatening growth and creating total chaos (which in theory it should within the next few years/decades) , a coronavirus like mobilisation of science and technology could come up with the solution within a few months/years. For now I feel it is just important to know what the solution is and lean in that direction- we need 'a vaccine against capitalism in a way or rather a system upgrade. Until then I think green investment will be extremely risky and/or flawed ??
Hi Peter
I'm not close enough to be able to pick out good investments beyond what brokers and advisors can do. There may be others who spend more time studying this and have views.
I had a minor involvement in ethical investing, and its hard. Benchmarks are hard to set up and hard to measure.
If anything comes across my horizon that looks promising I'll post.
Best wishes
That will be great. Thanks a lot!
All the best
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